Sunday, September 28, 2014

We don't want to confiscate your guns, we're willing to meet you halfway with a manditory buyback:

The biggest problem with this approach, though, is that it tiptoes
around the one reform that could really make a difference, but that
Americans would never accept: Mandatory gun buybacks. That's what
Australia did, after its own version of Newtown.

The Aussie population is now largely disarmed and if you're large and equipped with a table leg or a table knife, you're king of the hill.

For myself, I'm old, small, and feeble. Ask anyone. I like the idea of having a gun to keep things on a level keel until some young, healthy, strong fellow in a blue suit can show up and start the paperwork.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

I had numerous opportunities to be an introductory firearms instructor a couple of weeks ago and it was quite the experience. First a bit of background.As a member of the Denver Mad Scientists Club, I sometimes get invited to show off stuff that I've made by way of encouraging kids to take an interest in STEM topics. My observation is that if the demo is sufficiently interesting and hands on, you can subvert the youth into fields like engineering and physics.

So we got invited to bring our stuff to the Natural History Museum and let the kiddies have a look.
I brought several items including the (in)famous Pedal Air Gun.

The expo was set up in a long, wide hall, nice but nowhere near enough room for the gun with heavy projectiles so I made some "nerf" type foam darts for the occasion. We were set up on one side of the hall, and I pointed the gun across the hall at an unused door to use as a target. Amazingly, people walking down the hall immediately recognized the apparatus and were careful to check the status before crossing in front of it.

Putting a kid on the seat, I carefully explained how the gun worked, and what they were going to be doing. With the barrel pointed upward at about 45 degrees at an unused balcony, they would pedal until the pressure gage read 20 lbs and NO MORE.

We would then warn anyone near the projectile path to stand aside, and when the path was clear, lower the barrel to point at the door, and push the small valve release switch down to fire the gun. All in that order. No doing anything until all previous steps had been done. This worked fine and everybody loved it.

Then along came Daddy with his twins, a boy and a girl, who gave off the vibe of Wednesday Addams on espresso. Would the boy like to try the gun? Of course, and his sister as well. Swell. Hop on and I'll give both of you the lecture, which I did. The boy was ready to pedal at 90 mph right now and hear the rest of the instructions later. I made him stop and listen. His sister who will someday doubtless outshine Lucreza Borgia, watched and listened like a Russian spy in an American Nuclear sub. They got the part about pedaling to 20 PSI, and the part about the trigger.

The boy took off and had 20 psi in a matter of seconds. I told him to stop as he had enough pressure and his sister immediately reached up and pressed the trigger sending the dart upwards to bounce off the balcony and fall back harmlessly into the exhibitor next to us. Daddy immediately pulled Little Sister back and read her the riot act about taking turns and following directions. He allowed that the boy should get another try so I reloaded the dart, went back over the instructions and set him to pedaling. This time when he got to 20 psi and I told him to stop, he did and immediately reached up and pressed the trigger, sending the dart again up to the balcony and back to the floor.

At this point Daddy pulled Sonny off the machine and informed both kids that they were done here and they would "talk about this when they got home". Having heard this line once or twice from my own father, I imagine this didn't end well for the kids. I don't envy Daddy. Riding herd on those two is obviously a full time job.

When trying to teach kids about firearms, I suppose one could do worse than to start out with a Nerf gun although the Nerf people start you out at a disadvantage by using bad gun handling as a selling point. Still, you gotta start somewhere and the less potentially lethal the better.

Not being exercised in the case of the Mayor of Peoria who had someone SWATted for making fun of him on Twitter. Read the sad details at the link, it's a short article and covers the affray.

From the article:

There’s a joke about how a grand jury
will convict
indict a ham sandwich, but is there a similar joke about how a
judge will approve a search warrant for just about anything?

Well sort of, although it's probably an inside joke among traffic cops. It starts out with
Cop: "Got anything in your car I should know about?"
Driver: "No."
Cop: "Mind if I look?"
Driver: "Yes."

The joke goes on to tell of the driver spending 1-1/2 hours in handcuffs at the side of the road while the cop calls in a dog that's trained to sit on subtle command, and a judge who's trained to sign a search warrant based on the dog having sat.

Feeling down because you don't have a job? Don't have any prospects? No doctor will accept your insurance? Your car needs replacing but all the prospects were on the "Cash for Clunkers" list and are now gone?

Rejoice!Scientists have discovered yet another mood altering drug that will make you shrug off your problems and vote Democrat the rest of your life.

“What we have found is a process that may dampen the brain’s sensitivity to negative life events.”

Putting the fun in funemployment for you. Insty reported this, and what do you know, practically every comment was suggesting that whatever this stuff is, it would soon be found in the national water supply. Great minds thinking alike I guess.

Up to now we've had to rely on alcohol. Maybe this stuff won't destroy our livers.

When things get to bad in a country, the biggest symptom is an outflow of refugees. In East Germany it started with a trickle and quickly swelled to the point that the Russkies were compelled to build a great big wall complete with wire, lights, guards, and land mines to keep their happy citizens in.

Now the U.s. is reaching that point with the most successful being the first to fly the coop. They either individually renounce their citizenship to allow themselves to have a bank account in the foreign country they're already living in, or else arrange to live in one that treats them better.

At the corporate level, we now have the third highest corporate tax in the world and corporations are searching out ways to escape the tyranny. Since serious money is involved, the government is taking an interest and has announced policies (note: NOT laws) to discourage this much like the East Germans added extra rows of bricks and mines to discourage departures.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

For some reason the gator at the 9 o'clock position is near invincible. Also getting the perfect score of 120 isn't going to happen, at least not by me.

I'll probably try this again this coming weekend following the IDPA match with my center fire pistols but given that the gators aren't much bigger than .40 in wide, I'm thinking we probably won't see any center fire pistol scores over 60 points.

As a reminder, to get the full 10 points, your hole must be inside the gator. Touching the edge, even from the inside gets you only 5 points.

If your score is low, send it in anyway. These things are always trickier than you thing and if your score is low, it's because the target was hard.

Better late than never I guess, but I've heard it suggested somewhere (sorry, no link) that now that the Scots have voted to keep living in England's basement, so to speak, the English should be allowed a vote on weather or not they should be allowed to stay there.

Something I can almost get behind. Poltical Calculations has a piece on a geothermal beer cooler guaranteed to keep your beer at a perfect temparature* for quaffing** all year round at no*** cost.

*The temperature underground varies a bit by location, but generally hovers around 58F. This is probably perfect for most English beer but far too warm for most American tastes.

**Terry Pratchett defined quaffing as taking the tankard of beer and tossing it at your face while attempting to get as much of the flying foamy down your throat as you could manage. Poor aim resulted in dropping a lot of it down the collar of the fellow behind you which frequently resulted in a fight. In the establishments where quaffing was the practice, this was known as "just another Saturday night".

***Like free solar energy, the installation costs are disregarded. Suffice it to say you can buy a small refrigerator and run it for a good long time for the cost of this rig.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Brave Scots rush in where Angels fear to tread, as they say in the old country. The English have a slightly different version of this which you've all heard, so I won't repeat it. Last I heard, the secession was going to be a squeaker with no one willing to bet much on the outcome. Let's assume for a moment, that it passes.

First off I'm told England will swing to the Conservatives since Scotland is mostly Labor. Absent the Scots, the party that mismanaged England to the point of dissolution will be tossed out. Of course that leaves Scotland to be managed by the very people that made being part of England so intolerable.

The bankers are predicting disaster for no good reason. Or maybe there is a good reason. As an independent country, Scotland will no longer be tied to the pound which the common government can print to make up budget shortages as they go along. Scotlands choices are:
1. Do nothing and continue to use the British pound. They just get no say in how many get printed which might force some fiscal responsibility on them. Along the same lines, they could also adopt some other currency; the Euro or even the U.S. dollar, but why change all the price tags?
Choice 2: Print your own currency. Suggestions include the Numpty and the Poond. Advantage: You can print as many as you like. Disadvantage: See advantage.

A newly conservative England could start an economic turnaround if the new majority acts quickly. Lowering taxes, eliminating a lot of nanny agencies, deporting a lot of undesirables, etc, etc. It would also greatly strengthen the anti-EU parties to the point that England could post a real threat to leave the E.U.

If the parties over there operate like the parties over here, the Laborites in Scotland derive a good bit of their popularity from being able to rob British Peter to buy the votes of Scottish Paul. Absent Peter, this will be much more difficult. Of course the newly independent Scotland could immediately join the E.U. and become a member of the PIIGS Portugal, Italy Ireland, Greece and Spain. Germany who has been making the bailout loans may not be amused.

Now that the administration has given us Enterovirus D68 in minor epidemic quantities, along with Scabies and TB, his latest idea is to send US troops to western Africa to help with the Ebola epidemic.

The last time soldiers got involved with a disease it was the Spanish Flu of 1918. Large numbers of people in close daily contact coupled with a contagious disease is bad news all around.

Of course the military is a group that famously has been voting the wrong way of late, so maybe this isn't such a hare-brained idea after all. Speaking of hare-brained, Sen Durban thinks that a general amnesty would help contain the spread of Ebola. Presumably limiting it to West Africa and North America.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

After listening to the left whining for the last 20 or so years about the plague of the dreaded "assault weapon" upon the land to the point that some folks probably are surprised to not find them lying in the gutters outside their houses, the NYT is admitting that it's all been in vain.

“We spent a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of political capital
yelling and screaming about assault weapons,” Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu
of New Orleans said. He called it a “zero sum political fight about a
symbolic weapon.”

So neither the near mythical Kalashnikov nor the M-16 turned out not to be the corner drug dealers weapon of choice for rectifying inner city boundaries after all.

The AWB of 1992 was probably responsible for saving the Clinton presidency from itself by triggering a turnover of the House and Senate to the Republicans whose policies kept Clinton from enacting his worst ideas like Hillarycare. That and the Republican tradition of nominating the fellow who finished second in the previous primaries gave Slick Willie his second term.

David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, argues that the issue of gun violence
can seem enormous and intractable without first addressing poverty or
drugs. A closer look at the social networks of neighborhoods most
afflicted, he says, often shows that only a small number of men drive
most of the violence. Identify them and change their behavior, and it’s
possible to have an immediate impact.

Or you could simply identify them, convict them and jail them. That works too.

And some Large British cars as well. Conclave, which this time of year around here means a celebration of all things automotively British kicks off with a gimmick rally which this year I had a volunteer to navigate and help spot the gimmicks.

Question on the rally sheet: Where does Clark Kent get his underwear?
Answer, as you drive by it: Super Tees.

We got most of the questions. At the finish there was a sheet of tie-breaker questions which get pretty obscure. What does the AC in AC Bristol stand for?
Answer: Same as the AC in AC Cobra: Auto Carriers.

We did dismally on that due to my partner's reluctance to use her Pixie Phone to divine some of the answers. Everyone knows what a Nave Plate is anyway, right?

Since I had entered the rally, I was also automatically entered in the show the next day. Oh crap! Now I need to wash the cat and vacuum the debris from the floor. Fortunately it's not a big deal concours but I needed to do that anyway.

The show is fun although attendance is off from previous years. You get the one off

Everyone will immediately recognize this MGA-TC which was specially prepared by the factory for Le Mans, then never raced. The description says it was saved from scrapping by being "spirited" off to the U.S.

Lots of conversions like these two MG's

The red one sports a V6 Camaro engine while the white on has a Ford Tauras V6.

I may also have a chance to work with a museum to help restore this old girl to running order:

A '38 Morgan 3-wheeler with Matchless engine. Previous owner raced it and there are some modifications showing. The available budget for this is $0.00 so ingenuity will be at a premium.

Note the semi-exposed rockers with grease fittings of a type I've never seen. I do recognize the Amal Concentric carb though. Could be fun.

Motorcycles too. Here's on you don't see often:

An Ariel Square four. These things were very torquey and were considered an old man's bike, suitable for dragging a sidecar around rather than blasting through the corners. For corners, you'd want one of these:

SIG's Dispute with F Troop Is Ongoing: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives agreed to once again delay its
final classification of a SIG Sauer muzzle device, which SIG
contends is a muzzle brake but ATF classifies a silencer. The
U.S. District Court in the District of New Hampshire issued the
order, signed by both parties, on Sept. 9 and extended the stay
of litigation to Nov. 1. According to the order, after
re-examining the item, the ATF concluded that it was still a
silencer, rejecting SIG’s argument. SIG has until Sept. 19 to
submit a response... The item in question is the muzzle of the
SIG MPX carbine. Its 9.5-inch muzzle brake welded to a 6.5-inch
barrel can double as the internal components for a silencer. If
equipped with a metal cover it would suppress sound. Unless the
ATF changes its position or SIG gives up, the dispute will
likely continue in court. There’s no set date for a final
verdict. (I suspect that the outcome of this dispute will hinge
on the the concept of constructive possession. From Wikipedia, “A person can be
charged with constructive possession of an illegal device if
they possess the otherwise legal material to assemble it.” The
issue could then become whether a person is in constructive
possession of an unregistered “silencer” if this muzzle brake
is permanently attached to the firearm but the person is not
in possession of a matching “metal cover” for it.)

Those little chrome tailpipe tips found on the backs of Volkswagen beetles and microbusses back in the day make pretty good silencers in their own right. They are, after all silencers for the cars. This would then imply that all the aging hippies out there who still have their old air-cooled bugs can be arrested for constructive possession of a NFA device.

/s As loyal Democratic voters however, I don't expect this to happen. Just another example of how the law doesn't apply if you're properly connected. /s off

Thursday, September 11, 2014

The American Thinker has a report on a study that suggests that people who indulge a bit actually live longer. The rate is defined as 2 drinks a day for women and up to 4/day for men. I suppose we all knew that at some level even way back when beer was a sterile substitute for the untreated water which was all that was available.

Here's the punch line:

One
of the great largely unknown stories is that Prohibition was a
progressive project, driven by the same desire to perfect society and
thereby eliminate the downsides of human nature that underlie all of
progressivism’s fallacies. Another little-known aspect of Prohibition
is that the income tax was created (and a constitutional amendment
passed to enable same) as part of the deal which brought us Prohibition.
The income tax was created to replace the alcohol taxes which had
provided a substantial share of federal revenue. Talk about a Devil’s
Bargain!

So the tax system will drive you to drink, then tax the drink, then tax you some more and drive you to drink some more.....

From a revenue enhancement point of view this makes sense. If you are the cash cow being milked, it's not so hot.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The agency said in a statement: "Federal privacy laws prohibit the IRS
from commenting on specific taxpayer situations. The IRS stresses that
audits are based on the information related to tax returns and the
underlying tax law -- nothing else. Audits are handled by career,
non-partisan civil servants, and the IRS has safeguards in place to
protect the exam process."

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Legislation has been proposed to get several Colorado High Schools who use Indians or Indian-themed mascots to join the PC parade and drop them. Of course a mascot is someone or something that (usually) embodies characteristics desirable in a football team or some such and we certainly wouldn't want anyone to think that a native American might do that, so here's my suggestion:

Any High School who voluntarily drops the name Redskins, Indians, Savages, or whatever and adopts the name "Metrosexuals" will be allowed to impose a mascot of their own choosing on a nonconforming school.

My first High school dropped the Redskins and became simply the Reds. No word as to whether they now have a big bronze statue of Lenin out front but that would probably be too close to the truth for the faculty.

Monday, September 8, 2014

Wonder what happened in about 1991? Oh yes! Florida became the first state to adopt shall issue CCW setting off a cascade of other states to the point that now all are (theoretically*) shall issue and four are Constitutional Carry.

*The holdouts are frantically trying to figure out how to write shall issue laws that can be easily ignored or nullified by local officials. At this point it looks like a waste of time and money although in the holdout zones the polls are in little danger of being unelected (time) and money after all grows on taxpayers.

Flying to Reno is always an adventure inasmuch as only US Air and Southwest actually fly there. Southwest is direct for me anyway, but pricy. USAir goes through Phoenix. Take the early flight and pay less, or take the next flight, 3 hours later and pay more. Either way you catch the same connecting flight to PHX.

See the sights:

Like the bird roasting solar facility in CA down there cooking chickens or something for the Colonel.

Two days at the Washoe County range where there was plenty of space and lots of stuff to shoot. Here we are approaching the range. It's just below the reddish break in the mountain, near dead center.

Note that everything on that table is suppressed. One of them was fully automatic as well. Liz thought this one was double tapping. It was pointed out that the bolt was clacking back when she pulled the trigger, and clacking forward when she let off. The gun was firing once, but the noise was so much less than the bolt that it was being lost. Someone commented that they've used office staplers noisier than this.

Saturday we went back and tried our hands at Steel Challenge. One setup I hadn't seen was the "One-Second Challenge". Here's Smallest Minority having a go:

There is about a foot between the plates, and the object is to double tap each of the big plates, then hit the stop plate in the center in under one second. None of us did that although several of us broke the two second mark.
Check the swag that found its way into the raffle, including a genuine Unicorn:

Yup, 1400 rounds of .22 LR in one package. Donated by Bear Bullets. I did not win it.
Also included was a Ruger Huntsman in a custom holster by Engineering Johnson. Didn't win that either. I did win an AR lower receiver, so I now own a genuine Evil Black Rifle. Sort of. Some assembly required. Batteries not included.

The TSA had an extra special theater presentation for my traveling trunk that put me off enough that I forgot to toss my little CRKT pocket knife into it so I had to put it in an envelope and mail it to myself. $14.00 shipping and 4-6 weeks delivery. I feel safer already. I did win a much larger and more dangerous looking knife with a Mossberg logo on it. I don't know for sure but it may well have been Mossberg that donated that and the hats.

MKS Supply donated a Hi Point 4595 carbine and a bunch of hats and shirts.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

It's a wonderful thought, but that's how most borders have been drawn since the invention of guns.
Which brings me to this little gem from Ambrose Bierce:

“CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.”

Prior to the invention of gunpowder, men used swords and spears and sometimes sticks and rocks. The last time I remember boundaries being altered amenably was when Virginia and Maryland agreed to donate 10 square miles of their sovereign territory for use as space for the new national capitol. The land in question being a foetid swamp and reservoir for malaria and yellow fever, both were glad to be rid of it. Had they known what it would ultimately cost them, they probably would have lobbied for locating the new capitol in Kansas.The above quote is from The Devils Dictionary, which can be found here.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

The feds justify the designation by saying that part of the land is
suitable for the frog and the rest “could be made suitable” with
“reasonable effort.”

Of course with reasonable effort (flooding) the land could become more suitable for alligator as well. Problem is that the folks in Louisiana know the 'gators all too well for that argument to carry much weight.

The designation is apparently aimed at shutting down a timber operation for no reason except that it's a business which = bad.

The other problem with this effort is that the frog hasn't been seen is about 50 years and may well already be extinct. The plus side of this for the government is that it is no longer necessary for a creature to actually exist in order to call for expropriation of lands and resources to protect it. If the gambit succeeds, expect something on a grander scale.

The Wooly Mammoth once roamed the entire North American continent and the land is either currently suitable for it or “could be made suitable” with
“reasonable effort.” No further development will be permitted anywhere until suitable habitat has been restored, etc. etc. It only sounds stupid until you realize that it would make the EPA the most powerful government agency in the U.S. answerable to nobody.

Monday, September 1, 2014

So goes the claim in a piece I found on Townhall of all places. The money quote:

And all you need to get started is this book (link deleted),
a 9-volt battery, a couple of wires, a 2 milli-Amp resistor and two
moist sponges to attach to your head and your left arm....

I would suggest the author try this and see how long it takes for him to realize that resistors are measured in Ohms, not Amperes.

P.S. The adage about "if a little is good and a lot is better then too much should be about right" does NOT apply to self induced electroshock therapy even though if you win a Darwin Award, we all win.

And I suppose that as long as the terrorists supporters have a supporter in the White House, they'll get their way. The whole thing is here.

Keep in mind that September marks the anniversary of the greatest Muslim victory over the U.S. infidels since the Beirut barracks bombing or the capture of the Constellation. Come the end of September we'll see if CAIR and MB still qualify as educational outfits.